"In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times." - Brecht

About me

Unbeknownst to strangers who heard him sing in videoke, Crooner KR Guda did not have formal training in music, apart from a brief stint as a bass voice singing "Times of Your Life" during high school. Nowadays, he busies himself writing about politics and culture and studying photojournalism. As a journalist covering human rights issues, he is what can aptly be described by that John Berger quote: "Truly we writers are the secretaries of death." (Thanks to newly-sanctioned poet Teo Marasigan for that one)

i n s t i s

Aklat ng Bayan

Arkibong Bayan

Sinewaya

Pinoy Weekly

Rainy Days for First Spouses

Imelda Marcos, to my mind, has a peculiar place in our history, and it's not just because of her shoes, her weird habits or the fact that her hair has been that way since the 70s. No, Imelda, I'm sure many will agree, has some charm. She is naive, unintentionally funny, and eternally interesting. The fact that she may have been involved in crimes against humanity (human rights violations, unparalleled corruption) does not lessen the people's fascination with her. Imelda has been the topic of films, books, even musicals. She is, as far as I can tell, the only First Lady (or Gentleman) that people, for better or worse, genuinely liked as much as reviled.

Every September 21st, protesters invoke the images of Martial Law and Imelda. This time, though, the image of Imelda has been juxtaposed to her current, though much less grandoise and good-looking, equivalent -- that of the First Gentleman, Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo.

Unlike Imelda, though, there is nothing charming about Mike. For one thing, he looks suspiciously like Jabba the Hut. I am reminded of a Collegian fellow who, upon seeing one candidate for the UP student council who looks suspiciously like Doña Buding ("mayaman akoooo!"), scornfully explains that chubby people have no discipline ("Walang disiplina!"). A rather tasteless comment, I'm sure you'll agree; the fact that it may be true of Mike Arroyo, as his doctors confirmed when he was sick with aneurysm, does not mean we should generalize all chubby people.

So no, it is not his size that bothers me. It's just that Mike, unfortunately for him, looks exactly like a doddering slob that everyone assumes him to be. With the ZTE deal investigations in the Senate heating up, the image of gangsters running that palace by the Pasig River becomes more and more clear, and right in the middle of it all, the image of a godfather -- an uglier, meaner Don Vito Corleone.

Activists, of course, are absolutely correct when they compare the Marcos and Arroyo regimes in terms of the ferocity with which both deal(t) with dissent. The only difference -- and between Imelda and Mike, there is indeed a huge difference, and I'm not even talking about waistlines  -- is how psychotic spouses shape both dictatorships (if indeed we can categorize Arroyo's as one already) . Imelda provided for Marcos that umph, that elan, however fake it was, and for a while people were enamoured with it. Mike, in contrast, was never liked by the people at the onset.

I'm sure he must be good for something for Gloria. For one, he supposedly orchestrated Gloria's miraculous triumph in '04. He was rumored to be running the finances of Team Unity until aneurysm caught up with him. For a brief moment, people actually felt sorry for him, losing 10 pounds (arguably, though, people were more envious of the sudden weight loss than they were sorry). I don't think anybody believed him when he said he was turning on a new leaf, and began by dropping the libel charges against journalists, but what the heck, it was good for a laugh.

True to his image, Mike has been depicted as a bully in Joey de Venecia's testimony last week. And although Gloria's cabinet members refuse to confirm the bullying in Wack Wack sometime in March, Mike did exactly what people expected him to do. That is, escape investigation and proceed to Hong Kong, then Venice, then Zurich, that place where dictators go to during the rainy day.

Thus the uncanny comparison: Imelda, too, was there quite a lot during her heyday.

Posted by: kr.guda at 14:45 | link | comments

Of Lanky, Spectacled Firebrands

I remember those awkward moments in the company of family when I purposely evaded talk of politics, dreading the prospect of having to debate with them – back during the days when I was a sheepish but budding political animal and had no courage to confront my elders of their conservative politics.

I remember a time when I was watching television with my father, a thoroughly conservative fella who once was a military man and even got to captain. It was the late 90s, and on TV was one of those short documentaries about contemporary heroes of Edsa, the one sponsored by the likes of Ayala, promoting the virtues of non-violence and political action through prayer. What was odd was that when my father and I was watching, it featured Lean Alejandro, the fire-breathing student leader and Bayan secretary general who was assassinated by right-wing renegades in 1987. Normally, as I was in that “denial” stage in activism – meaning I had yet to come out of the political closet – I would shirk away from the TV room much like an adolescent would do everytime a kissing or bed scene is shown on the tube in the presence of parents. I knew my father, or at least I thought I knew his type: radical activists do not exactly endear themselves to military types.

I was surprised, however, when he appeared impressed with Lean. The documentary showed a clip of Lean speaking before a crowd in an anti-US Bases rally. I don’t remember what he said, but he was damn eloquent. “Intelektwal pala siya,” I remember my father said approvingly. He also said something about how activist leaders like Lean look a little bit alike. Lean looked like a young Joma Sison, a lanky, singkit guy in spectacles, breathing fire, raising hell amid a sea of agitated humanity. I made a mental list to confirm: Joma, Lean, Amante Jimenez…Hmmm.

This memory came back to me when I was trying to write something about Lean in time for his 20th year of martyrdom. Searching the web, I was not really surprised that non-activists and even people hostile to the political tradition of national democracy that Lean espoused and died for, did take note. While Lidy Nacpil, Lean’s widow, had her foundation, the Lean Alejandro Foundation, sponsor a photo exhibit of the martyr, the Inquirer, published a short essay on Lean by a contemorary of his, the US-based journalist Benjamin Pimentel. Even the ABS-CBN website had its special page devoted to Lean. I was half-expecting rock concerts, poetry jam sessions, unveiling of monuments for Lean.

Lean appears to have that uniquely broad appeal. For one thing, it is so much safer to lionize Lean the martyr (he died before the “rectification movement” of the ND movement came into full play) than, say, Jose Maria Sison, who is alive, though I suspect not very well because of his two-week confinement. Lean was in the “aboveground” struggle, and was a known associate of founding Bayan leader and former sentor Lorenzo Tañada – this makes him so much safer, I suppose, to traditional politicians and businessmen. Sison, though equally, or even more so, charismatic as Lean, and is also a reknowned poet and fancies himself (hehe) as a singer, is forever coterminus with the armed struggle in the Philippines. In spite of his humanity, the lukewarm response of the middle class to the continuing persecution of his person exposes this class’ distrust of such a radical political act as armed struggle.

This, of course, must not detract from the greatness of Lean’s legacy. He was a great man, had a great many talents, and is well-loved, and the history of the progressive movement is much more enriched because of him. What I am saying, I guess, is that martyrdom does not only a hero make.

So what does it take to be a hero? Well, Joma has a poem and song for that.

Posted by: kr.guda at 16:53 | link | comments (2)

Alicia Keys and the Modern Times

What is it with her that made someone like Bob Dylan cry, “wondering where in the world [she] could be”, in his song “Thunder in the Mountain”?

Maybe it was the weather, or the fact that I had nothing to do at that time, wasting my time away one evening while waiting for women activists from Gabriela plot their next move after fellow activists were denied departure for having “terrorist” links. I was in one of Gabriela’s rented hotel rooms waiting, watching television when I chanced upon Alicia Keys’ “unplugged concert”. I was fascinated: 24-year-old half-black Keys singing a rather silly song called “Unbreakable”, not exactly with the steely voice of someone like Whitney Houston. But it was truly soulful, in the tradition of the most heartrending singers of the troubadour eras of old; shades of Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday, spiked with a hiphop attitude.

I thought the performance was something special, leading me to do a Google research out of curiosity. Google yielded a ton of information: that she is classically-trained since age 7, that she was raised alone by her mother of Italian descent, that she’s dabbles in acting, that she’s fascinated by the Black Panthers, a Black militant organization that came out of the tumultous 60s. Last year, she travelled to Africa to visit children orphaned by parents and relatives stricken with AIDS. The visit produced a song with Bono and nurtured in her, according to interviews, a heightened awareness for the world and its problems.

Last year, Dylan came out with a new album, “Modern Times” (said to be titled after Jean-Paul Sartre’s cultural-political magazine “Les Tempes Modernes”, which was in turn named after the genius communist Charlie Chaplin’s film of the same title), whose song “Thunder in the Mountain” namechecks Keys: “I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn't help from crying / When she was born in Hell's Kitchen, I was living down the line / I'm wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be…”

Dylan, of course, is that quintessential protest singer of the 60s, that iconic American musician and artist who embodied the culture and passions of his radicalized generation. He is said to be, according to reports, affectionate towards African-American women, once employing a group of black backup singers called Queens of Rythmn. This may partly explain his fascination for the 24-year-old Keys. On the other hand, there may be something in her that Dylan saw – a parallelism, perhaps, with his art. For Dylan, Keys may very well be the embodiment of a media-saturated generation. The travails of the American war in Iraq is slowly radicalizing the American youth in the level of the 60s. And Keys as the anti-Beyonce or -Britney Spears, braided hair and all, may be just the image that it needs.

Posted by: kr.guda at 06:07 | link | comments (2)

Injustice

De Quiros, in his new column, joins the chorus of applause for the Dutch government’s arrest of Jose Maria Sison. He says this: “If it is true that Sison has committed these crimes—and there are witnesses aplenty, not the least of them the widows of the dead, to testify so—then his arrest is indeed a giant step toward peace, a victory for justice and the rule of law. Then there is indeed every reason, from the perspective of freedom, human rights, and all that democracy holds sacred, to be very excited about it.”

What’s wrong with this statement?

De Quiros apparently is not even sure that Sison commited the crimes – if they were indeed crimes – imputed upon him. My previous entry argues that the accusation goes against reason, and that people who only give credence to such accusations either: (1) dislike Sison and the national democratic movement, like De Quiros and the Inquirer; (2) or is politically-motivated to prosecute Sison, like the Dutch, US and Philippine governments.

How on earth can prosecuting Sison for really, really flimsy charges ever be a “giant step toward peace and the rule of law”? How can De Quiros conscientiously approve of the arrest when he is not even sure of Sison’s guilt?

The question that should be asked is: Given the military record of both Tabara and Kintanar, is the killing of Kintanar and Tabara a crime at all? As legitimate combatants (i.e. engaged in armed confrontations) in the civil war between the Philippine government and the CPP-NPA-NDFP, they should have very well known that they were legitimate targets by their enemies.

The problem with this state – whose ideological framework De Quiros embraces – is that when its armed agents kill enemy combatants (i.e. NPA, MILF, MNLF), there is no crime, only casualties. But when enemy combatants kill soldiers (i.e. killing of 12 Marines in Basilan, and killing of Kintanar and Tabara), they cry out to the heavens for justice, demanding and enforcing the arrest of those enemy combatants.

Joma is not even a combatant. Yes, he is the chief political consultant (not in quotation marks, as De Quiros so maliciously writes) of the NDFP, representing the revolutionary organizations, including the NPA, that are directly engaged in combat. But precisely because he is a consultant to a party to peace negotiations that we must make the distinction. This is precisely the rationale behind the Joint Safety and Immunity Guarantees that both the Philippine government and the NDFP signed: negotiators cannot be targetted in the armed conflict. They are there precisely to end the armed conflict.

Let us grant for a moment, though, that Joma, is indeed a combatant, and that he did order the killing of Kintanar and Tabara. If the widows of Kintanar and Tabara indeed feel that they have been wronged and that their spouses were unjustly killed by the NPA – who in turn declared they did so to punish them – the first thing that they should have done is to file a complaint in the Joint Monitoring Committee for the implementation of Carhrihl (Comprehensive Agreement for the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law). This is the organ, composed of representatives of both the Philippine government and the NDFP, which monitors violations of the agreement signed by both parties declaring their respect for internationally-recognized human rights laws and standards.

Filing a complaint in either the Philippine or Dutch courts goes against the very spirit of this landmark agreement. The NDFP, which claims to have its own judicial system, does not recognize Philippine or Dutch laws. But it declares commitment to Carhrihl. How can the widows make the NDFP accountable under a system that the latter does not recognize? The right thing to do is to make the NDFP accountable under this agreement that it committed itself to.

This is precisely why the NDFP says arresting Joma virtually kills the peace talks. The Carhrihl was signed by both parties as a step towards eventual cessation of hostilities. In assisting in the arrest of Joma, the Philippine government flouts the agreement.

“Frankly, I don’t understand what people are doing marching in the streets, banging heads with fully shielded and truncheon-wielding cops, to protest Sison’s arrest,” writes De Quiros. But of course, the militants have every reason to march in the streets to protest the arrest. Joma is a patriot, someone who spent his entire life for a revolutionary cause. He is innocent of the charges. He is being politically persecuted. The question is why De Quiros is not out there with the ralliers.

A quote from Pastor Martin Niemoller after the Second World War that De Quiros might have used before might be of use to him now: “First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Social Democrats, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Social Democrat. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew, Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.”

Avid readers of De Quiros’ column know by now his distrust of Jose Maria Sison, and by extension, the national democratic movement. He is entitled to his opinions. But to applaud the arrest and trampling of the rights of a man whom he is not sure is guilty in the first place but nevertheless dislikes is a betrayal of the very thing he claims to fight for:

Justice.

Posted by: kr.guda at 03:39 | link | comments (6)